


Aperio

by AdultDiversion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Marauders, Non-Explicit Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 02:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4649379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdultDiversion/pseuds/AdultDiversion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love between old lovers, or the possibility of something like it. Four snippets, spanning pre-first war to OotP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aperio

1.

“’Sirius Orion Black of the most Noble House of Black, 12 Grimmauld Place,’” Remus sniggers. “That’s how you introduced yourself to us for the first time. Self-important little shit, you were.”

It's true. Sirius had absolutely been – and probably still is, he figures – a self-important little shit. But at least, the part concerning the Noble House of Black, 12 Grimmauld Place, is history. This is _their_ flat – Remus’ and his. They share a tiny living room with an even tinier kitchen. They share a bathroom, where perpetual moisture clings to slick linoleum walls. They share a needlessly cramped bedroom, because it took them weeks to start shagging and subsequently, to realize that they needed _one_ bed – not two.

Sirius suspects he will never be happier than he is right now.         

There are eggs and bacon in their refrigerator, coffee and tea in the corner cupboard, and Remus cooks most nights, muggle-style, as they meet in the kitchen after work. Remus keeps an assorted supply of chocolate in the bottom drawer by the sink, hidden beneath kitchen towels, still under the impression that Sirius doesn’t know about it.

When they tangle up together on the couch, limbs folding around each other, easy and warm, Sirius likes to pinch Remus’ stomach. Sirius loves the sound of exasperated huffs, the small smiles in the corner of Remus' mouth, as he smacks Sirius’ fingers away. Sirius never brings himself to mention Cadbury or Lindt or After Eight, or the fact that Remus, angular and slim, is currently on his way to gaining a minimum of flab for the first time in his skinny life.

Sirius is profoundly disgusted with himself for adoring it so much. Domestic bliss takes the mickey out of any other living arrangement, he decides. 

He has taken to belting out songs in the shower every morning, crooning alongside Remus’ muggle radio, waking him. After Sirius dries off, he likes to crawl back into bed for a while, cradling the milky-white of Remus’ skin, the light bones and brown hair, as they lay out their days and plans to each other. Sirius is a man possessed.

He has never felt younger, or older, or more invincible.

It feels too good, too pure, to last.

 

\---

 2.

Remus has lived at 12 Grimmauld Place for a week, when Sirius finally says, “Let’s at least _attempt_ to have a proper chat, shall we?”, and thrusts a tumbler of Firewhiskey at him.

Remus feels his stomach lurch and drop. The smell of whiskey makes him queasy. He takes a swig.

Even after a week, he still finds himself tiptoeing around Sirius and the house, like some common thief. Meeting in the Shrieking Shack, meeting in passing during the past year, was easy – heartening, even, as they lacked the time for hashing out old details: the questions left unasked and uanswered years ago. Now, they've got the time and lack the courage, and it's slowly consuming them both, the open ends, sucking them each into different parallel voids. Remus hasn’t been closer in proximity to Sirius for thirteen years. Their adjacent bedrooms at the top floor of number twelve are miles apart.

Remus has seen the way Sirius looks at him: some newfound, gingerly restraint in his eyes. An unusual softness – of _all_ things – in Sirius’ voice, after twelve years in that dark, unyielding place. And Remus catches himself thinking that maybe, Azkaban _has_ softened Sirius in a way, tempered him. Or broken him. Remus can’t tell.

Either way: Sirius has found his courage, now, or the Firewhiskey found it _for_ him. He leads their way into the drawing room, sits them down. Sirius is wearing the same plum-colored robe he wore a couple of nights back, after he discovered how his old clothes still fit him like they used to at sixteen. He had informed Remus of this fact, wearing that robe, complete with a horribly clashing, silky-green vest, and positively beaming. Remus hadn’t found it funny at all.

Thin, Sirius seemed too thin.

So Remus had just shook his head and wrapped his arms around Sirius, quiet, like that. He decided to ignore the scent of moth balls emanating from the old robe, the sour whiff of Firewhiskey on Sirius’ breath. And as they had stood there, briefly, they were _good_ – it had been unrestrained, the embrace, undoubtedly real, before the moment passed and Remus had pulled back, awkward in the aftermath of something so uncannily familiar and long-lost. Sirius’ eyes were glad and sorry with a tinge of something hopefully dark, all at once. The moment had passed, and he informed Remus: “My mother always hated this robe, you know. Using dead house elves as decorating props, she didn’t mind, but this –“ he popped the collar theatrically – “It was just too hideous for her delicate sensibilities.”

“Your mother and I have that in common,” Remus had smirked, running a fingertip along Sirius’ elbow, feeling the fabric. Nice, rich. Velvet nudged pleasantly against his fingers, slightly protesting. Could he touch Sirius, still, like this? He had looked up into Sirius’ eyes: loving resignation and a slim dash of the wickedness Remus had always adored, deep-set in shimmering grey.

It made Remus want to cry, so he had excused himself, and gone outside for take-home curry. Sirius had tried to crack a joke at the table, later. Neither had laughed. They ate in silence.

 

Now, Sirius rolls the tumbler between his fingers.

“I don’t know how to mend this, or _if_ I can, and I don’t have some big speech prepared,” he starts.

“Moony, I am _so_ , so sorry I mistrusted you. That I thought you were the spy. …and Peter, the liar, always there, talking…”

Sirius hangs his head, rubs his face with one hand, tiredly. “I don’t know why I didn’t trust you back then, why I believed Peter over you. And I _knew_ you were doing business for the order. It just felt so— It just felt like I was losing you, you know, with you gone all the time? And it was all I could ever think about.  I didn’t dare to hope that we could actually…” 

Remus notices how Sirius’ manner of speaking has changed; slower and more contained, now, his voice possessing richer timbre than before. It’s become the voice of a grown man.

“I am _so_ sorry, Moony.”

“I know,” Remus answers. And he _does_ know – knows that Sirius has been sorry every day, for thirteen years. For Remus, and for himself. For James and Lily and Harry.

“And this is the part where I say I’m sorry for thinking _you_ did it-- right?” Remus halts. Something dark swells in his chest, claws its way out of his throat. “And I would like to, but that would be a lie. Because this cruelty you’ve always been capable of--”

Sirius looks at him, apprehensive.

“Well, it made you the likely spy, didn’t it, Sirius?” Remus sighs, looking intently at the piano in front of them. 

“And I feel horrible about the time you’ve lost, and I wonder who you’ve become. And I’ll always, _always_ be mad that you didn’t tell me about the switch. And I love you.” He sighs, before he goes on: “And _maybe_ , there is a way back to some semblance of how we were before— before everything.”

He’s done. He exhales, softens, inclining his head towards Sirius. Sirius looks at him.

“Yeah. OK,” Sirius smiles, sly and warm.

It’s enough, for the both of them. For now.

 

\---

 3.

Remus shuffles through the door of 12 Grimmauld Place at 11 o’ clock, far too tired for anything but a cup of tea and chaste kisses.

There’s a war brewing outside while Sirius is stuck here – _safe here_ – and Remus feels sorry for him, and guilty for being happy about it.

Sirius keeps himself occupied during the time Remus is gone by sorting through old family heirlooms, or rather, chucking away most of them. For the first time since their old flat, Sirius is nesting – here, in a house that never really felt like it was his. Rediscovering a familiar-looking burn-mark on his bedroom wall, Sirius taps his wand to it, and cracks the hidden hatch open with a gentle _aperio._ His record player and his old LPs are still there, undiscovered, untouched since the last time he used them. Sixteen. 

Sirius pours himself a glass of Firewhiskey and listens, cross-legged, on the floor. Then, he plays the same songs on the piano - to himself during the day; encores for Remus, at night. 

Sirius’ voice has a range, Remus thinks. Simultaneously light and dark, soft and snarling. Inside it, vowels gain shape and carry depth in a way Remus never knew or cared about, before; the dark chasm of an _a_ , or the smoothness of an _o_ , or the piercing elation within an _i_. Sirius has a voice like some woodwind instrument, containing a hum all to its own.

Sirius’ favorite record is _Revolver_. He likes the sitar, chock-full of timbering warmth; the way it collides with the flat, droning layers of John and Paul’s voices. How perfectly synced and meshed the sounds are. He loves the ridiculous seagull cries that litter _Tomorrow never knows_ : “It’s their track, really,” he tells Remus, one night. “Seagulls don’t give two shits about your trying to have a transcendental experience.”

Sometimes, Sirius will sing for Remus as he plays the piano. Not _Revolver_ , but other things, softer things. Lou Reed. Or Joni Mitchell, like tonight.

And so, when Remus shuffles through the door of 12 Grimmauld Place at 11, dead-tired and too exhausted for anything but a cup of tea and chaste kisses, Sirius brings Remus tea and sits him down in the drawing room.

“I’ve listened to Joni Mitchell all day.”

“Yeah?”

Remus leans back against the plush couch, watching Sirius take place on the piano stool. Sirius cracks his hands and shoulders, and starts to play. Long, running, heavy and sorrowful notes from the piano. Sirius' voice, a hollow shape in the gloom of the drawing room, as he sings:

 

_“Just before our love got lost, you said:_

_'I am as constant as the northern star', and I said:_

_'Constantly in the darkness_

_Where’s that at?_

_If you want me, I’ll be in the bar…'”_

 

Sirius leans back from the piano, extending his arms to reach the keys in the most dramatic of fashions. He flashes a grin and wiggles his eyebrows at Remus, over a shoulder, earning a low laugh from Remus: “Naturally, you lush.”

It’s easier to pass quips. Easier for Remus to pretend he didn’t register how the scent of lime-blossom tea _almost_ hid the notes of alcohol clinging to Sirius, as Sirius passed him the steaming cup. And, naturally, Sirius just smiles like it’s nothing, continuing:

 

_“On the back of a cartoon coaster_

_In the blue TV screen light_

_I drew a map of Canada_

_Oh, Canada…"_

 

Remus loves how Sirius’ voice trails from the low _Oh,_ along the _a_ s and _n_ s, climbing that last _a_ and hurling itself from the edge of it, down, downward. Something hitches in Remus’ throat. He coughs it down, and, toying with his own limits and sense of pride, goes to sit beside Sirius on the piano stool. Because, Remus thinks, limits and pride are in fucking abundance, either way, and what he really wants is to be near. To walk across the chasm between himself and the man sitting before him, to find footing and traction in the shape of his voice. 

Sirius stops playing as he approaches, cocking his head at Remus, questioning.

“Go on,” Remus whispers.

Sirius looks at him, smiling, before turning back to the keys.

 

_“With your face sketched on it twice_

_Oh you're in my blood like holy wine_

_You taste so bitter and so sweet_

_Oh, I could—"_

 

Remus can’t take it anymore, so he decides to kiss Sirius instead. There’s nothing chaste about it.

It’s different now, the sex. That’s only natural, Remus supposes: they’ve changed, and so it follows this would, too. They are slower and smoother than before; heavier with something new, resolute, as Remus sinks himself inside, as Sirius hisses and lifts and presses against him.

The piano disagrees with them as Sirius shifts, hitting keys, grasping for leverage. 

\---

4.

12 Grimmauld Place is only a shell, now. All that remains here are artifacts, and it is so very strange to Remus how, just a few weeks back, Sirius was excavating, cleaning, sorting. Harry will have to do the same at some point.

Remus walks down the narrow hallways.

In the drawing room he sinks down by the piano stool, clutching it, finally letting himself sob freely. It hits him that Sirius would find him pathetic, now, the way he must appear. Then, the uncanny rush of surprise at meta-cognition, even now, in Remus’ current state.  He remembers it from when his mother died, too, a few years earlier. During the wake, he’d dropped a cake knife on the kitchen floor and bent down to pick it up. It was by the fridge, underneath which lay a single piece of macaroni. Such a tiny thing. His mother must have spilled it, at some point. The macaroni just lay there, and it was the saddest and loneliest and most pathetic sight Remus had ever lain his eyes on. And that was a crazed level of engagement, he realized. Still, he had to stay in the kitchen for a while, for a fear of laughing in the guests’ face, at the absurdity of it.

Sirius would have gotten it, all of it – if only he’d been there.

**Author's Note:**

> CREDIT where credit is due:
> 
> This was inspired by James Blake's [breath-taking cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri6bd4G-Aig) of Joni Mitchell's _A case of you _. Mitchell's[lyrics](http://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=181) are evident from the text, I hope.__
> 
> Tumblr-user [ranunculusranunculusranunculus](http://ranunculusranunculusranunculus.tumblr.com/post/125730361944/some-wolfstar-feels-while-listening-to-this)' lovely art is what set me onto writing this, in the first place.
> 
> Go listen, go look! And come find me on [tumblr](http://joblesshumanitiesmajor.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Constructive criticism is more than welcome.


End file.
